retro-dict is a collection of historical etymological dictionaries.

On 2018-06-05 (and due to events that happened shortly prior to this date), this repository was mirrored to GitLab.com. From this date on, the GitHub.com version will be frozen as is. If you intend to use retro-dict data or take part in its development then please consider using the latest version at https://gitlab.com/xlhrld/retro-dict.

Transcription and typographical markup follow the guidelines of the DTA base format which was developed for the German Text Archive (DTA, https://www.deutschestextarchiv.de) on the basis of the TEI P5 guidelines (Text Encoding Initiative, https://www.tei-c.org). You can find the upstream version of the DTA base format (schema and documentation in ODD) at https://github.com/deutschestextarchiv/dtabf. retro-dict keeps an unmodified set of schemas (Relax NG and Schematron, under share/validation) for convenience and easier off-line use of the collection's data. Upstream changes to the DTA base format schemas will lead to updates of existing retro-dict data.

During transcription, all font properties are preserved. Printed characters are generally not normalized to keep (the partly) idiosyncratic transliterations as close to the printed original as possible. However, features that are only accountable to media-specific constraints are removed: line breaks are not preserved except in verse quotations. Hyphenation is also not preserved, i.e. all hypenated words are faithfully reconstructed. Words that are split across pages are only recorded on the page they begin on. Signature marks, running titles or the exact location of page numbers are not preserved. Page and column beginnings are still recorded, though.

In order to view the transcripts in a web browser after cloning or checking out this repository you may have to set up a webserver running locally on your machine in order to have the XSL applied automatically. An easy way to do this is:

user@host:retro-dict$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer

and then pointing your browser to http://localhost:8000/.